02/28/2008

Poor Little Dove

In 1933 a man named Franklin Bearce wrote a manuscript entitled
"Who our forefathers really were, a true narrative of our white and Indian ancesters [sic]." In this manuscript he claimed that his direct ancestor, Austin or Augustine Bearse had been a gypsy and come to the Plymouth Colony and married an Indian princess named Little Dove or Mary Hyanno. She was the daughter of Massasoit.

In 1938, the eminent genealogist, Donald Lines Jacobus, wrote an article rebutting this claim. A war of word ensued, little noticed by the world. Now in the age of the Internet, this controversy is back. Many Bearse descendants believe in the Indian myth and many (most?) don't. If you do a search in google for "Austin Bearse" you get 966 hits. "Austin Bearse" and Hyanno yields 316 or 33%. Likewise "Augustine Bearse" by itself has 661 hits and with Hyanno 297 (45%). So all totals thats 1627 without and 613 hits with Hyanno or roughly 38% of all Internet mentions of Austin Bearse have the Indian legend.

I happen to be a Bearse descendant myself, so I'm interested in this matter. I don't believe the myth. However, a recent Harvard paper available at SSRN (a subscription service) by Sunstein, Cass R. and Vermeule, Adrian, "Conspiracy Theories"
(January 22, 2008).
Harvard Public Law Working Paper No. 08-03, looks at such things in the public sphere. I've always found it mind-boggling that the public at large believes conspiracies about AIDS, 9-11, and the Kennedy Assassination all which have been refuted. The Indian ancestry of the Bearse family is eerily similar. Here's the abstract of Sunstein and Vermeule's paper:

Many millions of people hold conspiracy theories; they believe that
powerful people have worked together in order to withhold the truth
about some important practice or some terrible event. A recent example
is the belief, widespread in some parts of the world, that the attacks
of 9/11 were carried out not by Al Qaeda, but by Israel or the United
States. Those who subscribe to conspiracy theories may create serious
risks, including risks of violence, and the existence of such theories
raises significant challenges for policy and law. The first challenge
is to understand the mechanisms by which conspiracy theories prosper;
the second challenge is to understand how such theories might be
undermined. Such theories typically spread as a result of identifiable
cognitive blunders, operating in conjunction with informational and
reputational influences. A distinctive feature of conspiracy theories
is their self-sealing quality. Conspiracy theorists are not likely to
be persuaded by an attempt to dispel their theories; they may even
characterize that very attempt as further proof of the conspiracy.
Because those who hold conspiracy theories typically suffer from a
crippled epistemology, in accordance with which it is rational to hold
such theories, the best response consists in cognitive infiltration of
extremist groups. Various policy dilemmas, such as the question whether
it is better for government to rebut conspiracy theories or to ignore
them, are explored in this light.